Items Tagged with 'International Monetary Fund'

ARTICLES

The Federal Reserve will be able to hike rates gradually given the slack in the labor market and continued low inflation, with the first rake higher likely to come in midsummer of 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund.

If you search the Internet, congressional testimony, academia or the media for insight into how lenders price residential mortgages you're likely to turn up a mountain of discussion of the yield spread premium paid to brokers by lenders. Maybe a little about the fact that mortgage rates reflect where mortgage securities trade in the bond market, but not much that explains loan pricing for retail customers. Nothing that explains what banks make if they originate the loan internally and don't pay a broker or correspondent to do it for them.

Editor's Note: On Monday, Paul Jackson, the publisher of HousingWire, postulated the market sentiment that we are all in this mess together.
Two days ago, in one of his rare appearances in front of the press, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King spoke frankly to reporters over the results of his Quarterly Inflation Report.

There really is no other way to say it: the global economy is now on a debt binge the likes of which we have never seen before. But consumers are no longer at the wheel; instead, governments are now hell bent on protecting consumers (and the markets they help make) from the consequences of their own actions.

In examining the implication of the Greek debt crisis on the American financial markets, there are several points that continue to go unnoticed.
Underneath the veneer of market hysteria reports, with some suggesting that a collapse of the Greek financial structure is proof of the vulnerability of the GSEs, it appears a good time to put everything in perspective.
First, take a deep breath.

Yesterday Standard & Poor's announced its sovereign rating of Greece would be maintained for the moment at triple-B. The birthplace of democracy recently navigated a hotbed of solvency issues, including downgrades to its sovereign rating, as Greece became the poster child for 'how not to run your country's finances.'
In parallel, the day before, Moody's Investors Service said the United States risks losing its beloved triple-A credit rating if it doesn't better manage its piles of debt.
But more on that later, let's start with what's up with Greece:

Global losses tied to bad loans and securitized assets linked to them could top $4.1trn by the end of next year, as the specter of a global recession looms, the International Monetary Fund said in a semi-annual report released Tuesday morning.

Commentary

Every day, people in your community are looking for a new place to call home. But in the age of the digital shift, they are now getting most of that information from their mobile devices rather than more traditional sources.